Peace Protest Today
Vanessa Redgrave and Sir Mark Rylance have both shared their thoughts and feelings about protest for a new film which makes up part of IWM's People Power: Fighting for Peace exhibition.
Ed Hall: “I think because of the huge issues of world politics now and the fact that governments are prepared to deploy armies, I mean stop, stop the war must have a, you know, a very strong life and a very strong influence in the future.”
Lindsey German: “We have a very extensive, we have mailing list of over 100,000 people. We still have groups around the country, and they campaign on a range of different things that they take up, different issues that are related to wars. And I think what happens then that, that you kind of you keep the movement going, which I think has been crucially important and I think we're the only major anti-war organisation internationally, which I think has kept going to the extent that we have and has maintained the breadth that we've, we've managed to do. But then when you find there is a as there was last year when there was the vote to go to war in Syria over bombing ISIS, then you find you can get much larger numbers of people on the streets and the potential for conflicts is very, very much there and we think therefore the potential for an anti-war movement is still very, very much there.”
Kate Hudson: “Campaigning against nuclear weapons is very much on the resurgent at the moment. We've experienced a growth in membership and a growth in support and growth in activism around the question over the last few years, the majority of opinion polls have showed a majority of the population opposed to the replacement of Trident, and that's particularly so when it comes to young people. You know, because they can't understand this kind of 20th century Cold War hang up with nuclear weapons and status and all that kind of thing.”
Sir Markl Rylance: “So when do you use these weapons? That's what I'd like to know. To me, Jeremy Corbyn's absolutely right, they're useless. And, and you show me one ISIL or ISIS member who says, ‘Oh yeah, the reason we're not. I haven't bombed nuclear but dropped a nuclear bomb in England is because they'd attack us back’. I'm sorry. ********. They don't care about that. I don't think that would bother, would worry them at all.”
Kate Hudson: “If you have a situation where the President of the United States is giving free reign to nuclear proliferation and condoning it and saying it's a good idea, an utterly disastrous and exceptionally dangerous path, so we should all be under no illusion about what the Trump Presidency means, what the turn to the far right means; exceptionally dangerous, and that is one of the key reasons why it's absolutely essential that people need to be involved in the anti-nuclear and the anti-war movements at this time, really now more than ever.”
Vanessa Redgrave: “It is just as much of a threat but it's not an it, it's us. It's us, it's we that are the problem. For goodness knows, the thousand ways you can kill very large numbers of people. We’re the problem, not what you do it with. Got to pay attention to what's wrong with us and how to make us better. Because we do know history is full of the fact of tremendous self-sacrifice and generosity and, of British people, all sorts of people, everybody. They can also turn nasty.”
Listen to the actors and activists, along with Lindsey German, Convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, and Kate Hudson, General Secretary of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and banner-maker Ed Hall, talk about what the next generation of protestors might find themselves fighting for.
